Psalm 81:7

Psalm 81 opens with a call to sing aloud to God, the strength of Israel, with music, shouts of joy and the trumpet (Psalm 81:1–5). The trumpet at the new moon and the full moon in verses 3–4 tie the psalm to one of Israel’s great feasts. Believers differ on which feast it was. The Feast of Tabernacles is the one most often named, and others suggest the Feast of Trumpets or Passover.

At verse 6 the voice changes, and God speaks directly through to the end of the psalm. He first recalls the deliverance in these two verses. Then he gives his commands and his longing for Israel (Psalm 81:8–10), grieves that “my people would not hearken to my voice” (Psalm 81:11–12), and promises abundant blessing if they will only listen (Psalm 81:13–16).

The order matters. God’s grace comes first and his commands rest on it. He set Israel free before he asked anything of them, and that is what gives his later appeal its weight. The Exodus is the foundational act of redemption in the Old Testament. It shaped how Israel understood God, how they understood themselves as a people holy to the LORD and chosen to be his own (Deuteronomy 7:6), and what they owed him as his covenant people.

Pharaoh set taskmasters over Israel “to afflict them with their burdens” as they built his store cities (Exodus 1:11), and the Egyptians made their lives bitter “with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick” (Exodus 1:13–14). Verse 6 looks back on that toil from the far side of freedom.

The word for burden, çêbel, means a load, and here it is the load of forced labour. A noun from the same root, sivlot, names Israel’s “burdens” in Exodus 1:11. The shoulder is where a slave carries such a load, so the picture is of the weight being lifted off the body that bore it. The verb çûwr means to turn aside or take away, and God uses it of taking that load away from his people. “His” shoulder and “his” hands are Israel’s, spoken of as one person, and the shoulder and hands stand for the whole people who did the work.

The sentence begins with “I”. God says that he did this himself, and Israel’s freedom came from his power and grace alone, since they could not free themselves by strength or cunning. Exodus closes the night of the Passover with the same truth: “the LORD did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:51). The whole account, from the bondage of Exodus 1 through the Passover to the crossing of the Red Sea, is the story of God’s mighty act against Egypt on behalf of the people he had bound to himself.

Verse 7 turns to “thou”, and God speaks to Israel face to face. The verb qârâʼ means to call out to someone, to call on them or address them by name. In Egypt Israel cried out under their bondage, and God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exodus 2:23–25). The cry came from a tight place of distress, and God answered it with the Exodus.

This is who God is through the whole of the Psalms. David says, “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple” (Psalm 18:6). God gives the same promise as a standing invitation: “call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me” (Psalm 50:15). The God who is high above all things comes near to hear those who cry to him.

It is Mount Sinai. There, on the third day, there were “thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount”, and God came down to make his covenant with Israel and give them his law (Exodus 19:16–19). That was his answer to the people he had just brought out of Egypt, and it made a nation of slaves into his covenant people.

The word çêther means a cover, a hiding place or a secret place. At Sinai God was revealed and hidden at once. The people heard the thunder and the trumpet and the voice of God, while the thick cloud covered his glory from their eyes. He answered them closely and personally, and his majesty remained beyond what they could take in, so they met him with both reverence and fear. Moses later asked Israel whether any people had ever heard God speak as they had, and told them it was shown to them “that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him” (Deuteronomy 4:32–35). Isaiah speaks of the same hidden majesty and joins it to rescue: “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour” (Isaiah 45:15).

God proved Israel to bring into the open what was in their hearts and to teach them to depend on him. The verb bâchan means to test or examine, and it is used of testing metal to learn how pure it is. A test of that kind shows the true quality of a thing. God already knew his people’s hearts, and the testing at Meribah showed Israel, and everyone after them, their unbelief and grumbling, and it showed his power to provide where there was no way.

Meribah means “contention” or “strife”, and the name belongs to two places in the wilderness. At Rephidim the people quarrelled with Moses because there was no water, and God gave them water from the rock (Exodus 17:1–7). At Kadesh they contended again over water, and God again provided it, though Moses and Aaron came under judgment there (Numbers 20:1–13). Both times Israel complained against the God who had been providing for them all along. Moses tells Israel why God led them through the wilderness: “to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no” (Deuteronomy 8:2), and he goes on to say that God fed them with manna so they would learn “that man doth not live by bread only” (Deuteronomy 8:2–3).

Placing Meribah after the deliverance and Sinai sets God’s faithfulness beside Israel’s failure. God had been patient and generous, and his people had argued with him. That contrast is the ground of the grief he expresses a few verses later, when he says that Israel would not listen.

The Exodus is a pattern of the greater deliverance Christ accomplishes. God lifted Israel’s load in Egypt, and Jesus frees us from the far heavier burden of sin and the bondage of death. “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin,” he said (John 8:34), and he is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Paul writes that our old man is crucified with Christ so that we should no longer serve sin, “for he that is dead is freed from sin” (Romans 6:6–7). God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13). The shoulder freed from its load in verse 6 finds its answer in Christ’s call: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28–30).

Each part of verse 7 points to him as well. The deliverance Israel cried out for comes in full in Jesus, who was given his name because “he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). God answered at Sinai out of the thundercloud, and in these last days he “hath spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2), the only begotten Son who has declared the Father (John 1:18). Where Israel failed its test in the wilderness, Jesus was tested in the wilderness and kept faith with his Father in every temptation (Matthew 4:1–11), and he obeyed all the way to the cross. The people who quarrelled over water at Meribah are answered by the one who cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37–38). In him God brings his people into the new covenant he promised, writing his law in their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33).

God spoke these words at a feast so that Israel would remember, and remembering is still how faith is fed. The God who lifted Israel’s load is the one who has lifted ours in Christ, and that rescue came before anything was asked of us. Our obedience is a grateful answer to grace already given.

He still hears those who call to him in trouble, and he is at work when his presence is hidden from us as it was in the cloud at Sinai. He also still tests his people, and the tests are given to show us our own hearts and to teach us to lean on him. Meribah shows what happens when people who have seen God’s goodness meet hardship with complaint. You can meet your own times of testing by recalling what he has already done, in Scripture and in your own life, and by trusting that the God who delivered before will deliver again.